


Bridge

by michmak



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:12:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michmak/pseuds/michmak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are too different, he thinks, to have anything in common.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> I started watching this show because:  
> 1) I am a Trekkie  
> 2) I am obligated to watch anything Scott Bakula is in due to my residual 'Quantum Leap' love
> 
> Even though the show itself wasn't the greatest of the Trek-incarnations, I was a faithful viewer until it was canceled after the fourth season. Despite the many problems with the show itself, I managed to enjoy it. My biggest problem with Enterprise, outside of the fact that a lot of the episodes were complete shite, was the fact that the ensemble cast was often ignored in favour of the Archer/T'Pol/Trip triumverate. My desire to learn more about the other characters on Enterprise, in particular Malcolm Reed and Hoshi Sato, led me to a brief flirtation with the fandom. If ever two characters needed to get together, it was these two - I often imagine an alternate universe where Enterprise never focused on the truly awful Trip/T'Pol relationship and instead went with a more organic Sato/Reed relationship - a girl can dream...

They are too different, he thinks, to have anything in common. She is as fluid as the air around her, as vibrant as the stars she is named for - a builder of bridges.

He is as tense as suspension wire, ready to snap at any moment, with any provocation. He doubts that any light dwells within him. He is good at destroying things.

And yet.

She is trying to build a foundation in his life. With her words, her glances, her shy smiles and soft voice, she is becoming important to him. She is creating a place for herself in his world, and he doesn't know what to do about it.

He doesn't know how to build relationships - he only knows how to destroy them. He doesn't know how to nurture hearts, he only knows how to break them. And he doesn't know how to love.

He thinks that maybe, once upon a time, he did. When he was younger, and longed for his father's approval. When he tried so hard to follow the rules, and be exactly what his family wanted him to be - that's when he believed in love. But he doesn't believe in it anymore. He's never had any one love him in his life, except for maybe Madeleine, and even there he's not sure.

Can he be blamed for not understanding, then, what Hoshi wants from him? What she sees in him? He was broken by his parents disregard long ago, and has learned his lessons well.

He wonders what she sees when she looks at him, studying him with her deep-almond eyes. He doesn't think she sees the emptiness in him. Or maybe she does, and thinks she can create something where his heart used to be.

He finds himself wishing she would try.


	2. Sato Voce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He loved her soft voice.

He realized he anticipated the sound of her voice. Amidst the cacophony of other voices in the mess hall, over and above the near-silent hum of the engines, it was her soft voice he listened for.

It might have been the gentle cadence of her speech that drew him to her – he was not a man used to gentle things. In fact, he often prided himself on his tight, take-no-prisoners demeanor; on the hardness he had honed in body and soul.

His father - sodding old bugger that he was - was directly responsible for his inner core of strength. He was hard because his father had forced him to be - with every sharp word, with every glance - Malcolm had learned that in order to survive, he had to be strong. He didn't recall his father ever speaking to anyone in a gentle tone; unlike Hoshi, whose voice was gentle even when she was upset.

She was currently sitting two tables down, giggling softly at something Mayweather had said. He felt his lips quirk in automatic response to her obvious pleasure, before he forced his face back to neutrality. Turning precisely on his heel, his tray held stiffly in front of him, he walked to their table and tried not to notice her eyes light up when she saw him.

"Lieutenant Reed! Are you coming to join us?"

And she smiled at him even when he only nodded his head in response.

This was another thing he liked about Hoshi - she didn't seem to mind his silences. Instead, she filled them up with her words and her glances, shining her light in the empty places of his soul. She made him long for things he'd given up on long ago.

If he got used to it - got used to her - what would happen to him when she withdrew her warmth? When she decided to shine her light on someone else, and left him empty and aching again?

She had the ability to hurt him more than anyone else in his life, because she was someone he could care about and she was someone he would miss.

He wondered what would happen if he let her in completely. Would she see what he saw, when he looked in the mirror? Would she see his emptiness? Would she see his unworthiness?

Or would she see a place she could build a home? Would she see his heart beating tentatively with life, and recognize it for what it was worth?

Sometimes, he thought her small kindnesses alone would undo him - that all his shields and defenses would come undone and crumble into dust at her feet.

He realized, of course, that she could be his downfall. Where brute strength had never broken him, her soft voice would.


	3. Strays

His eyes flinch downwards when she looks at him, and his shoulders tighten. She doesn't understand why this is, but she knows it's the same response every time he notices her regard. It's a conditioned response, like the fabled Pavlov dogs.

Sighing, she looks at the UT and studies her fingers, before surreptitiously glancing sideways again. He wields his tenseness like he wields his phase pistol, but Hoshi tends to think his walls are more a shield than a weapon. This is his dichotomy - and it suits him.

She doesn't think anyone else sees what she does. After all, she specializes in communications. And Malcolm communicates more with his body language than he does with his spoken word. She wonders if he realizes this.

Sometimes, when he thinks no one is watching, she sees the real Malcolm. She can tell by the flash in his eyes, by the slight tremors in his taught-held body that he is fighting to keep his walls in place. But she can see the cracks.

When she was a little girl, she had brought home an abandoned dog. It was whip-cord thin, and suspicious of everything. Every time she spoke to him, or fed him, or reached out a gentle hand to him, he would stiffen up - almost as if he couldn't believe that what he was being offered was real. It took her months to undo the damage that had been done to him, months before he would relax in her presence - and months before he realized he loved her as much as she loved him.

She wondered how many months it would take before Malcolm realized that what she was offering was real.

He fascinates her as no one else on the ship does, because of the contradiction of his languages. While his words are precise, professional and mostly aloof, his body language calls of loneliness and fear. It's odd to think that their armory officer - the man who projects such an air of competence and strength - is afraid. Hoshi knows this as surely as she knows her own name. She can read between the lines - or in this case, the muscles and sinews - to his very heart.

Like calls to like, after all, and she is lonely too.


	4. Drowning

Odd.

He'd always been afraid of drowning, and yet here he was, in danger of doing exactly that.

He wondered if the agony in his chest was caused by fear or lack of oxygen, and decided that either way it didn't really matter.

He tried to smile at the sheer irony - he had escaped the Navy, and the crushing expectations of generations of Reeds, only to drown in space.

It was deliciously ironic.

Hoshi's voice broke around him, gentle and soothing, completely at odds with his racing heart and labored breathing, lapping softly along his frayed nerves. She was his lifeline.

Willing himself to breathe, he slowly blinked before returning his gaze back to the cause - and the calm - of his personal storm.

He supposed drowning in her eyes wouldn't be fatal.

*********

His eyes reminded her of bruised violets - smudged blues and grays, with a hint of wariness, as if remembering some long buried pain.

She didn't think he would appreciate the analogy. One would not normally think of flowers and Malcolm Reed in the same thought. It would probably offend his masculinity.

She smiled slightly at the thought, and noticed that Malcolm, while still facing her across the table, had shut his eyes tightly against her own. She noticed that his body, normally stiff even when he was supposed to be relaxing, had suddenly tightened, his breath becoming more erratic. She imagined she could see his heartbeat, pulsing at the base of his throat like a little bird fluttering to freedom.

He looked like he was in pain.

"Malcolm?"

Just one word, and his entire demeanor changed. His face relaxed, his breathing calmed, and he opened his eyes and stared into hers.

Had she thought his eyes were bruised flowers? She was wrong. They were intense as the ocean, turbulent and deep.

Before she realized it, she was drowning.


	5. Star-Gazing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Of course, the stars look much better if you're lying flat on your back," she teased. "Relax Lieutenant; I'm sure no one's going to jump you here."

Malcolm raised the telescope to his eye and looked up into the sky, trying to locate Enterprise. Beside him, Hoshi eagerly waited her turn. They had been told by the Xenla'dyt that the atmosphere surrounding Bat'tar made celestial viewings especially colorful, especially at night time.

The triple moons of Bat'tar just cresting over the horizon proved that – the moons were tinged a variety of different colors, ranging from a subtle pink to a vibrant orange. Standing in the middle of the empty field several hundred meters to the left of their lodgings, Malcolm had to admit the affect was stunning. There was still enough light refracting from the west that the colors the moons cast seemed to dance around them. Malcolm felt almost as if he had stepped into a prism.

"Have you spotted the ship yet?" Hoshi bounced on her toes beside him.

Malcolm frowned and tried to adjust the telescope, before admitting defeat. "I hate these things," he grumbled as he handed it to Hoshi and tried to ignore her suddenly wide grin. He knew what was coming.

"You come from a family of Navy Men and you can't use a telescope?" She managed to make the words `Navy Men' sound grave and serious, but her giggle gave her away.

Malcolm shrugged, "Not much use for one in space, is there?"

Hoshi smiled again as she held the `scope to her eye, and carefully started adjusting it. "Didn't your father ever teach you how to use one?"

"Reed men don't need to be `taught' things like proper telescope use. We're supposed to be born with genetic memory," Malcolm tried to keep the slight bitterness from creeping into his tone. "My father had no patience to teach me things he felt I should already have known."

Hoshi dropped her hands to her side, slid the telescope shut, and turned to look at him. He tried to ignore the way the myriad of lights danced in her eyes and on her skin, casting an ethereal glow around her. She looked like she had walked through a rainbow, and parts of it were still floating around her.

"Your father was an ass."

Malcolm smiled at her, "Yes, he was. Did you see Enterprise?"

Hoshi shook her head, "I can't figure out these damn things either." Tossing the telescope to the ground she sank down beside it and lay back in the grass, staring at the sky. "This is really beautiful. You forget how pretty the moonlight can be when you're on a space ship."

Casting a quick glance at Malcolm, she grinned at his trying-to-be casual at-ease stance; knees slightly relaxed, hands clasped behind his back loosely. "You're blocking out the sky. Quit looming over me and sit down – the view is much better from here."

Malcolm wondered how to respond, before allowing himself to gingerly sit down beside her. The ground felt surprisingly warm beneath him, and he barely repressed a contented sigh as his fingers twined through the thick grass-like vegetation surrounding him.

Hoshi, still on her back, nudged his leg with her foot, "Lean back and look up – isn't this spectacular? Trip is going to be so jealous when we tell him about this!"

Malcolm half-grinned at that, and slowly rested back on his elbows until he was almost completely supine. "I don't remember the last time I did something like this," he offered quietly. "Perhaps when I was a lad, with the Eagle Scouts – when I was working on my astronomy badge."

"I love star-gazing," Hoshi replied. "I still do it at night sometimes, on the ship. Of course, it's not the same when you're lying in a little bunk looking at stars as they're streaking past you. I much prefer this – lying in the middle of a field, with stationary stars twinkling overhead, and someone to share the view with."

Smiling at Malcolm, she nudged him with her foot again. "Of course, the stars look much better if you're lying flat on your back," she teased. "Relax Lieutenant; I'm sure no one's going to jump you here."

"I'm not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed," Malcolm replied dryly, before his brain could stop his mouth.

Hoshi giggled as the light of the moons did nothing to hide the sudden color that stained his cheeks, and wondered if her own blush was just as obvious. Her mind, already contemplating what it would be like to watch the stars from her bunk with him, had merrily boarded the `jump Malcolm' train.

Trying to derail those thoughts wouldn't be easy, especially since the air around them was suddenly thick with tension – all emanating from the man next to her, awkwardly clearing his throat. "I apologize, Ensign. I didn't mean that the way it sounded…"

Sensing that her armory officer was preparing to flee, Hoshi scooted her body a little closer to his and quickly reached out, snagging his elbow and pulling it towards her, making his back hit the ground with a soft thump.

"Relax Malcolm, and look at the stars. Do you think the Xenla'dyt name their constellations? Perhaps we should ask them tomorrow. I wonder if they have myths surrounding their stars like we do. Those ones up there look a little like Cassiopeia," she whispered, pointing above them and over to her left, "don't you think?"

She could feel Malcolm relaxing again beside her, shifting his body into a more comfortable position in the grass. "Which ones are you pointing at?" His voice was soft, his accent a deep rumble, as his gaze followed the length of her arm, trying to determine what she was looking at.

Hoshi rolled to her side and propped herself up on one elbow, trying to ignore the feel of Malcolm's arm and leg warming against her, "Right over there – see? There's her upside down crown."

Malcolm turned his head towards her and felt her hair, which was just sweeping the ground, catch slightly in the breeze and whisper across his face. It smelled of ginger and sesame and the scent, along with the light touch of her body along his side, was making his heart race. He wondered idly if she could hear it, even as he contemplated turning into her and burying his face in the luxurious strands. Shutting his eyes to ward of temptation, he groaned softly as he felt Hoshi lean in even closer.

"Malcolm, you can't see what I'm pointing at if you don't open your eyes."

Cursing to himself silently, he turned his head more fully towards her and slowly opened his eyes. He realized he didn't want to look at any stars – at least not the celestial kind. He just wanted to look at her. Hoshi-gazing. It could be his new past-time. "You're so beautiful."

Hoshi looked at him, startled as much by what he said as she was with the matter-of-fact way he had said it. "Wha…pardon me?"

Malcolm wasn't sure if her shell-shocked expression boded good or ill for him, and he smiled as he realized his little linguist was speechless. Rolling to his side, he gently lifted his hand and ran his index finger across her upper lip. `Damn the torpedoes,' he thought to himself, `I'm going in!'

"I said, 'You're so beautiful.'"

"That's what I thought you said," Hoshi whispered.

Malcolm's hand had moved to cup her cheek, and she tilted her head into his palm, reveling in the calluses she could feel, even as her eyes drifted shut against the sudden emotion threatening to overwhelm her. Neither said anything for a few seconds, but Hoshi took advantage of the silence to press even closer into him. The heat of his body was addictive.

"Hoshi," Malcolm groaned softly as he felt her arm drift up his leg before wrapping loosely around his waist. His hand slid from her cheek into her hair, his fingers tangling themselves in her silken strands as he tugged her face closer to his. Her eyes were still closed. "Look at me, Hoshi."

He had always loved her eyes. They were bottomless – eyes he could live in for eternity. He wasn't sure if the longing he saw in them was merely reflecting back at him from his own eyes, but he was willing to find out.

"Malcolm," her voice was so soft it was barely discernible over the fierce pounding in his veins. "Malcolm, please…."

He was lost. Her lips were softer than he would have believed; her mouth impossibly warm. He could feel her one hand tighten around his waist, her fingers clenching into the material of his uniform and scrapping against his back, even as her other hand wrapped around the back of his neck and threaded through his hair.

He tasted her sighs and swallowed her soft moans, reveling in the slightly spicy taste of her mouth – remnants of the ceremonial drink the Xenla'dyt had offered her upon completion of the first day of successful trade negotiations. At the time, he hadn't cared for the taste, but when mixed with Hoshi he realized how potent it was. He would have to ask their hosts if they could spare some for their return to Enterprise.

Rolling to his back to free the hand that wasn't trapped in her hair, he pulled a willing Hoshi with him. Her slight weight against him, coupled with the heat of her body, was almost unbearably pleasurable. He could feel the tensile strength of her slim thighs on either side of him, and rocked his hips into her as he wrapped his arm more tightly around her.

He realized with the bit of rational mind he had left that things were quickly getting out of hand. His Hoshi deserved better than this – a quick fumbling in the dark on an alien planet, in the dirt. Sighing with frustration and more than a little bit of regret, he untangled his fingers from her hair and gently pulled away from her.

"Hoshi, love, we have to stop…" His hands were now on her shoulders, pushing her up. He could feel the sudden tenseness in her, and wondered if he would ever have the chance to hold her like this again. He almost felt like pulling her back to him when he felt her sit up, but was gratified when she stayed where she was, straddling his body.

She was a goddess. Her eyes were slumberous, yet sparking with passion, her lips bruised from their kisses, her hair a nimbus around her head. His hands drifted down from her shoulders to her waist, his thumbs rubbing in circular motions against her hip bones. "Hoshi, I…"

Words failed him. He had never been a communicator - had always been a firm believer of actions speaking louder than words – yet, for the first time ever, he wished this wasn't so. He wanted to give her the words, because words were important to her. He just didn't have the words he needed to describe all she made him feel.

"Hoshi, I…"

Smiling tenderly at him, Hoshi leaned forward and propped her elbows on his chest, letting one hand run gently over his mouth. "I love you, Malcolm."

He grabbed her hand, kissing it, feeling her words crashing against him, breaking his silence. "You own my Lazarus heart, Hoshi."

And he smiled at her, her beautiful face framed by the darkness of the Bat'tar night, the three moons and all the stars in the universe fading into oblivion behind her. She was his universe. He knew he would spend the rest of his life star-gazing.

 

_~fin~_


End file.
